Saturday, November 3, 2012

Among feminists, Princeton professor and former State
Department official Anne-Marie Slaughter is not a radical. She must count as a mainstream
feminist.

Several months ago Slaughter caused a ruckus in the media
and the blogosphere when she wrote an article explaining that she was giving up
her high-powered job in the State Department because her children were reacting
badly to her prolonged absences.

A mother who had been an integral part of her children’s
lives was no longer around very much. One child in particular felt neglected and abandoned and was acting out.

I accepted Slaughter’s decision to sacrifice her job in
order to do what was best for her children, but I questioned her conclusion that women in the future could
avoid her dilemma if feminism further infiltrated our culture.

I also wondered how she could have reached such a wrong-headed
conclusion.

Perhaps she was just trying to demonstrate that feminism, as
a radical ideology, could addle even the best minds.

Now Slaughter has followed up with a new article about
achieving gender parity in society.

Apparently, she has discovered that some men have been acculturated
in feminist values. These men, mostly whiners, it appears, want to stay at home
with their children in order to facilitate the goal of workplace gender parity.

Slaughter describes them thusly:

Others
are from young men who want to be able to spend more time with their children
and be fully equal parenting partners with their working wives but feel they
don't have those options either. Indeed, a number of men have written to bemoan
the strong gender stereotyping that they encounter, whereby a guy who wants to
take paternity leave, flex-time, defer a promotion because the job up has too
much travel, or simply needs to leave at 6 every night to pick up his kid from
daycare, is regarded as insufficiently committed to his work or else just
"not one of the guys."

Naturally, a feminist like Slaughter would attract men who
are whiners and bemoaners.

But note their and Slaughter’s warped reasoning.

These “men” have every right to organize their time as they
wish. If they wish to have jobs that allow them more time at home with the
children, that is certainly their right. If they wish to sacrifice their
careers in order to advance their wives’ careers that is also their right.

But whatever makes them think that they should be rewarded
for it? Why do they think that they deserve promotions and bonuses equal to
those individuals who work longer and harder and, presumably, more effectively?

Why are they incapable of taking responsibility for
their own life choices? If you work less than the next guy, for whatever
reason, you will likely not be rewarded as handsomely as he is.

Deal with it.

Worse, yet, what gives these whiners and their feminist
enablers the right to control what other people think of their
behavior?

Slaughter is so agitated about this imaginary problem that
she wants to call in the thought police.

If a man is a member of a work team and if the team needs to
stay late to work on a project, should he be rewarded for leaving early to pick
up his child from daycare?

If his absence impacts the team’s work negatively, is no one
supposed to notice? If the team’s project is rejected, should he not be held to
account?

Slaughter may fashion herself a moderate feminist, but she completely ignores
the exigencies of the workplace and wants to undermine teamwork and to police
thought.

She has no interest in or awareness of the marketplace; she
wants to make it look like what her ideology dictates.

Those who believe that they can lie down with an ideology
like feminism and just siphon off the good parts are fooling themselves.

How does Slaughter propose to undermine the workplace and to
police thought?

First, she recommends that men file lawsuits over gender
discrimination.

Surely, that will help create more jobs and a harmonious
work environment.

Think of it… and you should, because Slaughter clearly has
not… a man who works less will get promoted, not based on his competence or his good work, but
because a court has ordered it.

How well do you think a court-appointed executive will be
able to function when his colleagues and subordinates believe that he does not
merit his promotion? What do you think this regime will do to morale?

And then, Slaughter proposes another instrument of general
indoctrination, what is called a “conversation:”

I am
more convinced than ever that the only way to make the kind of change we need
to allow workers to build, provide, and care for strong families is to change
conditions and cultural mores for men as well as women. But men have to join
the conversation—publicly, candidly, and loudly.

When they start talking about a conversation they’re coming
after your minds. It’s brainwashing light.

If you imagine that this conversation is going to conclude
that men who choose to spend more time home ought to take responsibility or who
otherwise sacrifice their ambition for family obligations should accept
responsibility for their choices, you are very, very naïve.

Slaughter has no interest in how the marketplace functions
or in whether it is effective and efficient. She is hellbent on finding a
way to force men to stop competing and to stop striving and to stop being
ambitions.

In other words, she wants men to cease behaving like men.

It will never happen. True, the whiners will still be out
there and feminism will produce more of them. Other men will still treat them as
they merit according to the choices that they have made and for which, if they
want to be real men, they should take responsibility.

2 comments:

Tradeoffs. We can't "have it all". If you want a Rolls Royce or a Ferrari, you will have to pay big bucks for a new one, bigger bucks for a an especially prized older one, or a whole lot less for one that doesn't run.

Those who don't understand that...don't understand the world they live in.